Trump Extends $100,000 H-1B Fee Another Year, But Courts Still Block Its Collection

For a year now, the H-1B visa program — the primary pathway U.S. employers use to sponsor foreign workers in specialty occupations such as technology, engineering, medicine, and finance — has been shadowed by a single number: $100,000. That is the payment the administration first attached to new H-1B petitions filed for workers outside the United States under Presidential Proclamation 10973, issued September 19, 2025. One year later, that proclamation was due to expire. Instead, on September 18, 2026, the administration extended it for another twelve months, pushing its new expiration to 12:00 a.m. Eastern time on September 21, 2027.

The extension itself changes little about the underlying policy. The $100,000 payment requirement remains attached to new H-1B petitions filed for beneficiaries applying from outside the country through consular processing, subject to a national-interest exception the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant. In extending the proclamation, the administration pointed to what it described as measurable effects of the original restriction: a reported 92 percent drop in H-1B registrations from large IT outsourcing firms, a nearly 97 percent decline in consular processing requests for the visa category, and a shift toward more highly credentialed applicants, with the share of registrants holding a master's degree or higher said to have risen from roughly 45 percent to 66 percent over the past year. The administration's stated rationale for continuing the policy centers on concerns about wage suppression, competition for entry-level jobs among recent U.S. graduates, and fraud in the registration process.

What the extension does not resolve is whether the fee can actually be collected. That question has been working its way through the federal courts for months, on a separate track from the proclamation itself. In June 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the fee, concluding that it functioned as an unauthorized tax rather than a permissible condition on visa issuance and that it had not been adopted in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act. The administration appealed, and on July 24, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit declined to pause that ruling while the appeal proceeds, finding the government had not shown a likelihood of success on the merits. As a result, USCIS and the State Department currently cannot assess or collect the $100,000 payment on H-1B filings, even though the underlying proclamation authorizing it has now been renewed through 2027. Several other lawsuits challenging the fee remain pending in other federal courts, with mixed results so far, and further appellate proceedings are expected.

That combination — a policy renewed by the executive branch but paused by the judiciary — is not a stable resting point, and employers and prospective visa holders should not mistake it for one. Court rulings can be reversed on appeal, and the administration has signaled it may revise the proclamation in ways designed to survive further legal challenge if its current approach does not hold up. For now, employers filing new H-1B petitions for candidates abroad are generally proceeding without submitting the $100,000 payment, but doing so under a policy that could, in principle, become enforceable again with limited notice if the litigation turns.

The practical stakes reach well beyond corporate immigration departments. A software engineer weighing a job offer that requires consular processing, a hospital recruiting a physician from abroad, a university extending an offer to a foreign researcher, and the family members who would relocate alongside them are all affected by how this litigation resolves, regardless of where in the country the employer is located or where abroad the applicant currently lives. Because H-1B sponsorship reaches employers and applicants nationwide — and consular processing by definition involves people currently outside the United States — this is not a story confined to any single state or region.

Anyone with a pending or prospective H-1B matter, whether they are an employer weighing a sponsorship decision, a worker abroad awaiting a visa interview, or someone already in the United States considering their options, is welcome to contact Baltazard Law Office to discuss how these ongoing developments may affect their specific situation. The firm represents immigration clients nationwide, working directly with each client rather than through case managers, and in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French.

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Sources

1. "Restriction on Entry of Certain Nonimmigrant Workers" — The White House, Presidential Action (September 18, 2026)
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3. "The $100,000 H-1B Fee and the September 20 Cliff: The Filing Decision Employers Can't Postpone" — Buchalter
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5. "Appellate Court Pauses $100,000 H-1B Fee Policy as Appeal Continues" — Littler

By Baltazard Law Office